


the king and his smuggler

by sentential (fallencrest)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen, M/M, Non-explicit slash, Pre-Canon, Siege of Storm's End, Spoilers for ACOK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/sentential
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two heroes. Each one is only a hero in the other’s eyes. That still makes them heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the king and his smuggler

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [got_exchange](http://got-exchange.livejournal.com/) at LJ. Giftee: [dahliaxxx](http://dahliaxxx.livejournal.com/).

It seems absurd: the king and his smuggler. But it’s a simple enough story, easily reduced into its fundamental elements.

There is a king who wasn’t always a king.

Once he was the brother of a boy who wanted to be king.

Once he held a castle against a siege. It took months before the king’s men were starving and weak and broken. Months before a man among them went rogue, tried to raise a flag in surrender, and was thrown into the dungeons for his foolishness. They were hard months, stretching every man out on the wrack of life and testing him. If every personality is formed around a few key events, this siege makes deep grooves in that of Stannis Baratheon, the brother who would one day be a king. He was a hard man before, harsh, sombre, and mirthless. The siege makes him more so.

The men of the castle had held their small revels early in the siege. All of them laughing and helping themselves to more of the supplies than they were due; all but the king, who saw them do it and knew how it would destroy them. He did his best to keep them from it, but even a king cannot have eyes in all places at once, and they would have run out of food even if he had prevented them.

It hurts to move, hurts to breathe, and most men take to their beds when the supplies run out. The king is prepared to die but he will not yield, no matter how often the men plead, no matter how tight his skin stretches over his bones or how much it hurts. Renly’s pleading is the worst. The boy is little more than an infant, five years of age, speaking in half sentences, and demands, and the king had given Renly half of his own ration when there was still food to be rationed. Still, he is a boy and his crying hurts worse than any physical torment: how do you tell a boy of five about justice, honour and the ways of war?

Instead, the king tells the boy of their elder brother. Renly had always loved Robert. The king tells Renly of the men feasting outside the castle walls and of how Robert will come and dash them with his war hammer and Renly’s eyes grow big as hazelnuts and he asks if they be allowed to eat Mace Tyrrel’s feast then. The king says that they will be able to feast on whatever they want, when Robert comes to break the siege.

When the siege is broken, it is not Robert who comes and there is no feasting on fruit and wine. The siege is broken by the smuggler, his galley hung with black sails, and his hold full of salt-fish and onions.

Renly says, “That man is not Robert. He is only a commoner,” and the king does not argue. The smuggler brings life, where Robert has failed to bring victory and saviour. You cannot explain such to a child and the king does not even attempt it.

The smuggler is a common man, indeed, and no Robert. He is not the hero of the stories Renly likes. He is no knight, no great lord with lands. He does not ride in tourneys or save fair maidens. Even when, later, the king makes him a knight, and then a lord, he will not ride in tourneys nor save fair maidens.

Still, the king will always think of him as a better hero than Robert. Bringing a ship with a hold full of salt-fish and onions and saving a garrison is a nobler task than crushing the skull of a prince and scattering rubies across a riverbed, the king thinks.

The smuggler is a better man than Robert. The smuggler is, in the king’s eyes, a truer man than any he knows - himself included. Still, everyone knows the phrase: there is no honour among thieves. So he takes the smuggler’s profession from him, takes the ends of four fingers with it, and gives him something worthier of him. The king makes the smuggler into the onion knight because the smuggler has done him great service.

The smuggler might have walked away, fingers intact, and kept on being just a smuggler and nothing more. But the smuggler sees something in the king which he can’t walk away from.

You see, the smuggler loves the king. He loves him for the fairness of his offer, its harshness. He loves him for what he sees in him.

You see, the smuggler hadn’t believed in the heroes of Renly’s stories - and he still doesn’t. Gallant knights are all hypocrites, all the maidens are probably whores, and most gains are ill-gotten. He believes in a new hero now though: the king has made him believe. The new hero is a man of justice, equanimity. He is even-handed in bestowing honours and punishments alike. He suffers neither flattery nor lies.

The new hero is exiled, or so the smuggler thinks, from his lands, by his cruel brother, Robert, King of the Andals, and the Rhoynar, and the First Men. His castle, the one he’d held against the siege, is given to Renly, the baby. He lives out his days on a cold, dank rock and the smuggler sits at his right hand.

The hero takes an ugly wife.

Years pass, and the hero has no sons.

The smuggler has sons. He has five, healthy sons. And then, in time, two more. He names one for the hero and one for the hero’s father.

When the hero is wrath, the smuggler tells him truths which calm the storm, or don’t; and when he does not calm the storm, he does what he can to rectify the wrong. He goes as envoy to those who have wronged the king and tries to bring them around to his cause.

When the hero is disconsolate, the smuggler tells him truths in understanding, lays his good hand on the hero’s shoulder and lets him know in that action - if not in words - that he will stand behind him.

It is a simple story. Each man is a hero in the other man’s eyes. Each man wants to stand at the other’s side, and to be the man the other sees him as. Each man would rather die than see himself dishonoured in the other’s eyes. They are a compass and the north pole, constantly aligning to match.

When the king says to the smuggler, that his brother’s children are not his brother’s - but the children of an incestuous union between the queen and her brother - the smuggler goes to the chambers of Jon Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, on the king’s behalf and brings the Lord of the Eyrie before the king.

The smuggler never suspects that the king wants anything more than justice. If Robert’s children are not his own, then the king must be his heir, but the smuggler sees no selfish motive and nor does Jon Arryn. It is unthinkable.

Jon Arryn’s death is the confirmation of all that the king had suspected but, still, he takes no pleasure in it. Instead, he flees the city and tries to find a way of proving the truth of his suspicions. The smuggler goes with him, would not know how to do anything but go with him.

The king and the smuggler sit on the dank rock that Robert granted him and they talk about Robert’s bastards and Cersei’s bastards and how the king is the true heir. They gather forces and they wait for the storm. They wait for the blow.

When it comes, the king shows no sign as to whether he had expected it, and he neither cheers nor weeps. But the smuggler understands that, when Robert dies, Stannis Baratheon has become a king in truth - even if the throne is denied him.

The smuggler understands that, when Renly rises up, no longer a boy, and proclaims himself a king, Stannis Baratheon cannot let him go unopposed - no matter how much he had loved the boy.

It is a simple story. There is a king who believes in justice and there is a smuggler who believes in a king. The smuggler always tells the king the truth and the king always hears what the smuggler has to say.

They go to war together. Sometimes, it feels like it is just the two of them at war with allies and enemies alike. They trust in nothing, but they trust in each other. It is simple.

The king is a brother to kings and a king in his own right. He is a lord possessed of lands and a lord dispossessed of lands. He is out to get what is his because it is his by rights. He does not believe in gods. He does not believe in men. He only believes in righting the wrongs done him and in the truths the smuggler tells him.

The smuggler is a common man and a thief. He is a knight and the father of the king’s squire. He is a lord and his sons will be lords after him. He will serve the king who gave him this. He does not believe in heroes. He only believes in the truths he can see with his eyes and he sees the truth in the king‘s eyes when he speaks of his cause.

It is enough that each man is himself. It is enough that the king is the king, and the smugger is the smuggler. As long as these conditions are fulfilled, they will stand together and each will be a hero in the other’s eyes.

They go to war together.


End file.
